


for you, i was a flame

by andsmile



Series: hard things break [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Canon Compliant, F/M, Varchie!Centric, Veronica Lodge Needs a Hug, and veggie if you squeeze, mentions of barchie, post-4x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andsmile/pseuds/andsmile
Summary: She always knew it wouldn’t end up in her favor.or,a chain reaction on veronica's pov (post 4x18).
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Jughead Jones & Veronica Lodge
Series: hard things break [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742893
Comments: 34
Kudos: 84





	for you, i was a flame

**Author's Note:**

> I had to write a follow-up for the first piece I wrote on Archie’s POV about this mess that the @RiverdaleWritersRoom came up with. I think it was harder to write this one, especially because Veronica is such a complex character. I tried my best to keep it in-character, in my interpretation of how Veronica could react to this in a way that’s dignified (and not just… drama).
> 
> This still isn’t a happy fic. I went with the lines of what I wrote in the first part, so maybe you should read that so this can make sense. I’m sure this is not the route they’ll take in canon, but it’s the road I’m taking. I tried to be ultra-respectful for all the characters here, in all their different relationships. I suppose I could've done more for B&V, but I couldn't stomach it.
> 
> Trigger warnings for: panic attacks, unhealthy coping mechanisms, daddy issues, slightly toxic Varchie.
> 
> Thanks Katiekins for proof-reading it and suffering with me. Recommended song is: Amy Winehouse – Love is a Losing Game.
> 
> Yes, this will have another installment, but not really soon! I am so grateful for all the support with the last one shot and all your patience waiting for LM. Much love!
> 
> Still, A&V forever!

“you do this. you take the things that you love, and you tear them apart, or you pin them down with your body and pretend they’re yours.”

(richard siken)

.

.

.

It’s not even the betrayal that hurts the most. It’s not even the lie.

For better or for worse, Veronica is used to this. She’s been surrounded by liars and swindlers her entire life. Her mother tried to kill her father, her father pulled the rug, her mother said _it’s you and me now, mija_ and then invited him in again, her father called her his only child, his heir, the apple of his eye, and then showed up with a mistress and a new daughter and a new origin story for every turned page.

No, the betrayal is secondary.

The whole thing is quite theatrical: Archie and Betty kiss in a videotape, hemmed in by fairy lights like they were the main couple in a movie. Jughead fumes by her side and every breath he takes sounds like _iknewitifuckingknewit_. Veronica’s heart beats faster and faster as she takes it all in, the irony of it all—the man she loves kissing the girl she adores and neither of them seem to be thinking about her as they stomp on the trust she put in them, but that’s not even it.

What hurts the most, she comes to realize much later, is how she fucking knew it, too.

.

.

.

Archie looks at her like he’s wounded. She’s not sure how she looks back at him. She doesn’t pay any attention to whatever Betty has to say—she turns around and leaves the AV Club room, down the hallway, but he catches up with her and holds her wrist and she’s suddenly _disgusted_ by his touch.

“Let go of me,” she says between clenched teeth. What happens next is as bizarre as everything else—Archie’s guilt is rotten and Veronica can’t stand it, can’t stand his words, the way he says _I love you_ and _I’m sorry_ like they’re supposed to mean the same thing. She can’t stomach him falling to his knees and the tears in his eyes. “Stand up.”

He does. It’s right there, when Archie stands up again and stops playing a part, and looks into her eyes, that she’ll see how his lips are still sort of stained from the kiss she gave him when they were dancing, how his tie is matching her silver dress, how she can see herself in every piece of him, that she’s been _so_ stupid. That she went against everything she'd ever learned in a life of betrayal and knives twisting. That she believed him, that she put her heart in his hands for him to tear it apart. _Again_. She’s trembling with revulsion, shivering all over, but she’s not sure if he can notice.

“Say something, Ronnie. Say anything.”

At this point, Archie has broken her heart twice, both times begging for her to say something she couldn’t say.

_I love you._

_Goodbye._

The third time's a charm. The third time, she'll take her heart back.

“I was right to be afraid of love. I should have never let myself go there with you.”

.

.

.

She walks back into her house and walks past her parents. She’s ashamed of them, of what she’d need to say— _you were right, daddy. you are always right_ —that she doesn’t say anything.

In her bathroom, she throws up the acid sugar from the punch when her mother knocks on her door asking if anything’s wrong.

Veronica is sitting on the floor with her body shaking against the cold tiles, holding her knees to her chest and trying to breathe into the tight bodice of her party dress, but she manages to tell Hermione that everything’s fine, and her mother leaves her alone.

She rips through chiffon, tulle, and silk. She gets out of her dress, holding the fabric in her hands as she sits next to the toilet like she’s some sort of Holly Golightly having a meltdown in her beautiful gown, except there’s nothing poetic about it.

She doesn’t want to cry. She doesn’t _get_ to cry. She’ll do anything if it means she won’t cry. Archie already had all of her tears once, every single one of them, mascara stains on pillowcases, ugly sobbing in people’s arms. This time, she won’t give him anything.

Veronica clutches the tulle and takes deep, sharp breaths. Flashes of the last couple of months invade her thoughts with every gulp of fresh air—Archie, more than once crying out of nowhere, big warm tears on her neck. _He’s finally falling apart_ , she remembers thinking as she tried to hold him together, as she tried to kiss and touch his pain away. Archie, trying to avoid outings with Betty and Jughead. Archie, his glossy eyes whenever she started to talk about their plans for the summer. They would spend it in the city, she would show him all of the places that were once hers so they could become theirs, they would rent a convertible and drive to the beach, wind in their hairs. Veronica wanted to invite Betty and Jughead to come along and Archie said, _no, no, you and me, just us._

She remembers his words, his big words. _You are, now and forever, the only girl for me._ She believed him. She believed him like the day she knelt in a church and said she’d embrace the light because he would guide her to it—and so she tried to be better, she tried every day. She believed in him because he believed in her. She believed in him like when she was a kid and Hiram took her ice-skating in Central Park and held her hand promising that he would never let her fall, _don’t be stupid, little girl_. Blind trust, _blind_ , stupid trust, stupid girl. Stupid little girl. She believed when her father lied about her being the only one in his heart and she believed when Archie used the exact same words.

There’s no _you and me_ , there’s no _us against the world_ , there’s no _forever_. There’s just now, and her, and alone.

This joke is all on her. She’s the punchline. Stupid little girl.

.

.

.

Veronica spends two hours on the bathroom floor. Then, she gets up, shoves the ripped dress on a bag that will later go to the trash. She’s freezing from inside out, still shaking, but she doesn’t shed a tear, not even in the shower as she washes away every bit of Archie’s scent that could still be clinging onto her skin.

In the morning, her parents are treading careful steps around her when she emerges from her room without a hair out of place and in her highest heels. At the breakfast table, Hiram and Hermione talk about literally everything but prom. She’s about to leave and dive into work because there are bills to pay and phone calls to make, when her father stops her by the door.

“Mija?” he shows her his forearms, the vertical sleeves buttons opened. He doesn’t ask for help, as he never will, but she can see the shake in his hands. The simplest of tasks and he can’t accomplish. Veronica holds the shake of her own hands so she can work on her dad’s buttons. She fears that the proximity to him will make something inside her too fragile to withstand but she takes a deep breath and her chin tilted up.

Hiram does the same and, when she’s done, he thanks her only with his gaze. It’s not until she turns around that he speaks. “Didn’t… Archie, didn’t he spend the night?”

Veronica freezes. There’s a part of her that wants to be the girl from last year, the one that would shout _no, he didn’t, and this is your fault_ to his face, because wouldn’t it be easy to blame her father for all the wrongs in the world? Wouldn’t it be easy to say _congratulations, daddy, Archie finally proved to be what you always thought he’d be_? Wouldn’t it be easy to trace back all of his fuckups to her dad’s fuckups?

She remembers stomping her feet when her father moved in again. _Fine, do whatever you want, but Archie gets to spend the night and you will treat him nicely_. She remembers how dreadful it was when Archie and Hiram met again after she intimidated her father into a truce, nobody’s blood spilled this time, and how she held Archie’s hand and kept her chin up as Hiram taught her. She remembers how victorious it felt when Hiram only said _goodnight_ instead of conjuring another plan to drive Archie away from her. Later, when Archie pressed her on her mattress, rushing into kisses, he whispered _a truce is fun, but I’ll take him down again for you whenever you ask me to,_ and Veronica smiled, and moaned, and believed him.

Stupid little girl.

“Archie isn’t a factor anymore,” she says, not once looking down. She thought it would be harder to say it aloud, but it’s surprisingly easy. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask any more questions,” she says, and that’s the end of it.

.

.

.

Archie isn’t a factor anymore. That’s what she thinks of when she walks into her diner and tells Pop Tate to get rid of every photograph on the board.

“Burn them. I don’t mind.”

He looks at her with warm, knowing eyes of someone who has seen enough heartbreak in his lifetime to recognize another one. She’s not sure if Pop will do what she asks him to—he seems like the kind of person who’ll place the pictures in a drawer instead, who’ll come to her and say _these are your memories, you oughta keep them_ , but if he doesn’t burn them, someone will.

Down at the speakeasy, Veronica thinks about renovating, about painting the walls a different color and changing the stage’s position. Or she can just sell the entire place, hand it over to her mother. She’s leaving soon, anyway, two weeks from now, and they’ll go by fast. She doesn’t need this place, or the place above it, or all the things she thought she should keep or build to make this town better. She’ll happily never set foot in Riverdale again.

Veronica slides her hands over her naked arms. She feels cold, despite the immediacy of summer. Her phone buzzes inside her handbag and she gets it out of habit, regretting it right away when she sees the picture on her lock screen: her and Archie right before the party yesterday, him standing behind her with his hands around her waist.

Her eyes flood, but she _refuses_. She swallows the lump in her throat, unlocks her screen, and immediately changes the picture to something as generic as it can be—a sunflower field, whatever—and only then checks her messages. There are tenths of notifications in her Vixens group chat but everything else is silent, except for one new message from Betty Cooper.

**_i know you probably hate me right now but i hope we can talk… please, v._ **

Veronica’s hand trembles and she has to lean against the counter. She doesn’t hate Betty because she hasn’t, until this very moment, even _thought_ about Betty. She thought about _BettyandArchie_ and that girl-next-door bullshit that got them kissing until it made her sick, but not about the fact that _Betty_ had done this too, that Betty kissed Archie back and put her hand on his neck and pulled him closer. That Betty felt his scent, but it wasn’t even new to her because she had already felt it before. Because she loved him first.

She remembers the first time Betty and Archie kissed. It was mostly okay, because they had broken up and things were so different, but for many days the thought haunted her and she kept waiting, waiting for the moment when Archie would say _I’m sorry, Ronnie, but it’s always been Betty_ and she would’ve been unable to say anything because Betty loved him first. And Betty told him so first too, she wasn’t afraid of loving him, and Veronica used to think that Archie deserved so much more than the flawed, scattered affection she could give him.

After knowing about that first kiss, she’d waited and waited for that day to come until she kissed Jughead in a bathtub and called it a day; she remembers the exact words that she told herself, _stop being silly, Veronica, this boy means the world to you and this girl is everything, they’re not going to hurt you_.

Veronica stares at Betty’s message without knowing what to feel. With Archie, it was easy—he no longer matters, he no longer exists, no longer a factor, he’s not getting anything from her—but this is piercing through the second layer of her thick skin. What could Betty even tell her to make anything right? Maybe _I’m sorry_ , since she didn’t the first time, because Veronica didn’t even think she should apologize? Maybe _I never meant to hurt you_ , even though Betty lied to her face for God knows how long and wait, guess what, maybe she had been lying even before. Maybe she never got over Archie, maybe she was just _waiting_ for—

They used to kind of joke about it. Betty and Veronica.

Archie can’t choose between anything, they’d say. Archie can’t decide if he likes blue or green; chocolate, or vanilla, or strawberry, or peanut butter. Archie can’t decide between music or football. He’s not sure if he wants toast or waffles. Archie can’t decide if he’s going to the party or not. It was a joke that Betty often started, something that only them, B&V, found funny.

Veronica thinks about all the times she laid her head on Betty’s shoulder and felt comfort and peace, and all the times they shared a bed, and all the times that she thought, in the quiet darkness, _one day he’s going to make up his mind, and it won’t be me._

Never once has Veronica missed being her former self, except for now. She wishes she could actually, really hate Betty, so much that she’d plan for revenge, that she’d slap her senseless, that she’d enlist everyone she had some power over to _fuck up Betty’s life_ , but she’s ultimately not that person anymore. She doesn’t even have the energy to be that person.

Still shaking, Veronica deletes Betty’s message. Then, she deletes her from her contact list.

.

.

.

Later, back in her home, Veronica finds a box and ransacks her room for any reminiscent of Archie—and Betty.

There’s some pretty obvious stuff—the portrait on her vanity, a pink hair-tie that she borrowed from Betty one of these days, a book that they were reading for AP Lit, and there are all of the hidden traces: all of his white worn-out t-shirts, the grey ones too, two pairs of brief boxers, his collection of forgotten guitar picks, the blue dress shirt that she claimed as hers so long ago, the Riverdale High hoodie that she’d occasionally wear when missing his arms around her. She goes through drawers and every bit of her closet; thinks that eventually, she’ll have to get rid of some clothes of her own because they know way too much. She thinks about taking the box to school tomorrow, give it to Kevin, or some neutral, diplomatic common friend. Maybe it’ll just join her prom dress in the trash. It doesn’t really matter, as long as she can’t find a single remnant of them between her things.

Veronica is out of breath when she’s done, absolutely exhausted. She falls down onto her bed, pulls the covers over her body and shudders furiously, cackling her teeth, and that’s how she falls asleep.

.

.

.

At school, no one seems to know anything. No one whispers around her, no one realizes that her life changed so drastically over the weekend. No one really cares that she isn’t walking down the hall with her arm linked to Betty’s, or that she’s not kissing Archie by her locker. More interesting things probably happened at prom than her leaving with her bleeding heart in her hands.

The box is still in the Pembrooke. There are things in her locker that she needs to get rid of, too, like the photograph of Archie in his Bulldog uniform that she had stuck behind her mirror hanging on the metallic door. There’s a bunch of little notes he’d written her during classes, silly things that spanned from _u look so hot_ to _i don’t know what i’d do without you_ but she can’t stomach looking at any of this right now.

That’s what she’s thinking about when Jughead Jones walks up to her with big dark circles under his eyes. The last time he approached her—Saturday night—it was to hold his hand around her wrist and pull her out of the decorated gym, away from the sappy romantic ballads, into the AV club. _You should see this_ , he said, _you have to_.

Veronica didn’t spare a single second to think about him this entire weekend but now, when he comes closer to her again looking like he hasn’t slept for a full hour in days, she’s reminded that they were never just three. “Jughead,” she says. “How…”

 _How are you_ , she intends to ask, but wouldn’t that be dumb. He shakes his head briefly. They’ve never been really good with small talk. “I talked to Betty. This weekend, I…” he sighs. “It’s not like I could escape it. We live in the same house.”

Veronica nods. There had been a talk about this—a long time ago, Betty asked if it was weird that she and Jughead shared a brother, if anything should change because her parents were dating, were they cross-siblings now? Veronica laughed and said _c’mon B, haven’t you watched Clueless_ , and they watched that movie together, gushing over Cher’s outfits and a young Paul Rudd with his washed-out jeans.

“I—there’s more to it, Veronica,” Jughead says, blowing out a breath. “To the story. You should talk to her.”

She keeps her head up. “I don’t think there’s anything Betty can say that will change the fact that they were sucking each other’s faces behind our backs,” she says with a spite that she doesn’t think it’s real.

Jughead’s shoulders are down like he’s carrying some unmeasurable weight. Veronica frowns and Jughead’s eyes tell a whole story that she wishes she couldn’t read, but that’s just how her and Jughead work, talking in silence.

 _It wasn’t just a kiss,_ it's what his eyes are telling her. Veronica clenches her jaw. “You should listen to her,” he says and there’s a crack in his voice that she doesn’t expect.

.

.

.

Archie isn’t at school on Monday.

Veronica isn’t sure if it’s a good or a bad sign but, as signs go, she’ll take anything that gets her breathing with more ease. Throughout the morning, she confirms her theory that the story didn’t leak yet—it’s another big secret between her, Jughead, Betty, and Archie’s absence. Cheryl sits next to her during first period and complains about how Veronica missed her and Toni’s coronation as prom queens. Veronica hums and smiles, occasionally responds. Her eyes are glued on the blonde low ponytail of the girl sitting in the front row.

She thinks about what Jughead implied—there’s more to the story, that it wasn’t just a kiss—and she thinks about what happened after the tape ended. If Archie’s fingers delved into blonde hair, if he pulled it gently the way he used to do with her, if he moaned against her mouth and slid his hands down her body, if his heart beat faster than when—

“V? You okay?” Cheryl interrupts her chatting and places a hand on Veronica’s wrist. The touch makes her jump, heart thundering in her chest. “You look pale.”

Veronica feels the rise of bile in her throat. “Archie and I broke up,” she says, abruptly. Cheryl’s mouth hangs open, and in her peripheral vision, Veronica sees her eyes filling with compassion.

“V…”

She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’m okay, I just—I can’t be here right now.” She shuts her book closed. The teacher is writing whatever on the blackboard and Cheryl says something that Veronica doesn’t hear. She gets up and grabs her things and walks out the door, ignoring the teacher saying _Miss Lodge_ and the pair of green eyes that follow her.

Once she’s out of the school and inside her car, Veronica inhales and exhales so harshly that it sounds like she’s wailing. She’s felt it before, the prelude of a panic attack, but she won’t let her mind trick her into it right now. She _won’t_ , she won’t give them this satisfaction; them sleeping together doesn’t justify her being such a mess.

Her hands are trembling when she tries to place the car key in the ignition. She needs to get out of here, get away from Betty, she wants to go back to the Pembrooke, she wants to hide under her covers and—

“Hey,” two quick knocks on her window startle her. She drops the car key on the floor.

It’s Jughead.

The logical thing is that he probably noticed her running out the classroom, and he’s probably worried because, as ironic as it is, he’s usually the only one that really knows what’s going on inside her. She always kind of hated that about Jughead. How he simply _knows_.

Veronica’s breathing is still erratic, and her stomach is clenching around nothing. She hasn’t eaten anything last night, or this morning. She swallows her salty saliva and tries to breathe in deeper. Jughead doesn’t wait for her to say anything—he opens her door and the gulp of fresh air actually helps. “C’mon," he says. "I’ll drive.”

.

.

.

Veronica never even knew there was a peak overviewing Sweetwater River, but here they are.

“So, they didn’t fuck,” is all she can say after Jughead tells her the story he thought she should hear from Betty. She feels spent. She’s so tired. Her body is sinking into the passenger seat.

“No. Only had this emotional tryst while we were—I don’t even know what we were doing,” Jughead says. There’s something in his voice that she can’t quite recognize, because honestly, she can count on one hand the times they’ve been alone together. Maybe he’s shown her this kind of weight and vulnerability before; maybe she didn’t pay enough attention. It doesn’t matter. She knows that he doesn’t give a fuck about her not noticing things about him.

She doesn’t know what they were doing, either. She was probably caught up with her father or the business, but that doesn’t excuse Archie from _writing a song_ to Betty, from calling her up to his room so he could _serenade_ her, and it surely doesn’t excuse Betty from going and entertaining his thoughts. Veronica thinks that maybe this is how people feel when they get so beaten up that they have no choice but to give in. It hurts so much that she feels numb to the pain.

“And she stopped it before it became something more,” she continues. She doesn’t have it in her to doubt Jughead’s words—of course, Betty was the one who stopped it, who saw the mistake, who didn’t want to go on. Veronica doesn’t even know how it could’ve been any different. She doesn’t even think she’s surprised.

“Yeah,” Jughead murmurs, looking down at his hands.

So, Archie didn’t feel any of Betty’s body. Archie _just_ wrote Betty a song that she didn’t let him play because she picked Jughead. _Well, fuck me_ , Veronica thinks, and it’s almost funny, how the only thing she has ever loved finally made up his mind about something, and she always knew it wouldn’t end up in her favor. It’s just another testimony about how _stupid_ she is.

There’s silence after that. Veronica is so exhausted, but she notices Jughead’s demeanor, how his lips are turned downwards. She wonders, briefly, what happened to his beanie. “Are you going to forgive her?” it’s what she asks. She couldn’t care less about the beanie.

Jughead laughs. It’s actually just a chuckle, some air going out his nose, and Veronica thinks he gets it—the joke. But it’s different for him: Betty stopped it. She picked him. She picked him over her childhood passion, over her once-upon-a-dream. They’re not in the same gag. In hers, Veronica stands alone, having ripped out her heart out of her chest to give it to a guy that was out there writing songs about her best friend.

“She chose me,” he voices what she’s thinking. “I know. It’s what she said she did. I—I think I believe her. But still…” he shakes his head. Veronica glances over at him again. “I knew it, you know. I’ve always… I fucking knew it. I always knew that one day Archie would change his mind and—” He stops talking, probably noticing _who_ he’s talking to, but Veronica silently tells him to go on. “So, she says she chose me but is this what I am now? A _choice_? After all this time, all the—is it what I’m supposed to be?”

Veronica closes her eyes when they start filling up. She promised she wouldn’t cry but she doesn’t have the strength to keep any promises right now. “I guess it’s easier for me than for you,” Veronica says, eyes still closed. Her voice isn’t clogged up. Jughead won’t even know she has tears stuck in her eyelashes. “I wasn’t even an option.”

If Jughead were any other friend of hers—if he were Cheryl, or Kevin, or even Reggie—he would come up with some sugar-coated bullshit about how _this isn’t how it was. Archie loved you. Archie still loves you. Archie will always love you._ There’s a little part of Veronica that wishes he’d say that, if only so all the pain had some validation, but Jughead isn’t any other friend of hers, so he says nothing of the kind. Instead, he pulls out a doubt that lingers deep inside her soul.

“Do you think _we_ fucked them up?”

Veronica opens her eyes to look over at him. So many times, she’s had this same conversation with Jughead without saying a word. Across each other in a booth at Pop’s. In so many moments while Archie was bleeding or Betty was crying or—they’d look at each other. _This is our fault_ , they’d soundlessly say. _We brought them into this darkness. We should just let them be the uncomplicated love story they’re supposed to be_. She has thought that so many times. How selfish of her, to demand Archie’s love or Betty’s friendship. How horrible of her to want something she could only destroy.

She wipes the tears away from her eyes. “I don’t know what I think.”

.

.

.

The day following their conversation in the car, Jughead comes to Pop’s with a duffel bag and hard eyes. _I can’t forgive her_ , he says. Veronica asks him nothing more, leads him upstairs, and soon he’s settling in the miniscule attic room she used as her own for a great portion of her junior year before moving back to the Pembrooke.

From what Veronica notices, Jughead’s heartache is a silent thing. He’s still going to school every day but insists on working a shift at Pop’s to pay for his temporary stay before leaving for Iowa. Veronica doesn’t fight him. Between serving tables, he reads and writes a lot, eats a little less, drinks more coffee. They don’t ever talk about what happened between the four of them again and, for that, Veronica is grateful.

Her heartache, on the other hand, has no pattern—it’s a bullet wound that’s been stitched with friable threads that are ready to be snagged and tore apart if she doesn’t tend to it carefully.

She manages to do so the best she can. She spends all kinds of time working—she shuts down the speakeasy for those possible renovations, talks about business with her father, drinking the remains of her maple rum with him in his studio until her throat is numb. She online shops with her mother for her future apartment in New York City, chats about color palettes for the living room. The motions are easy.

It’s only when the creeping, despairing anger sets in that things get hard. It’s when Kevin gives her a soft, warm look that makes her feel so exposed. It’s when Cheryl holds her hand to show her unwavering support. It’s when Toni looks like she’s chewing something bitter. It’s when she runs into Betty between second and third period and Betty looks up at her with eyes eerily bright and her nose pink — she looks like she wants to say something, but she just starts closing and opening her mouth like she’s a fish out of water.

It’s when she sees Archie again, in the same hallway she left him during prom.

“Ronnie,” he says. She doesn’t know if he sounds ashamed or hopeful, all she knows is that he doesn’t look real. His hair is brighter given the pale skin behind his freckles. The thin skin around his eyes is almost bruised like he had rubbed it way too many times, and Veronica feels that unnerving cold coming back to her from inside out.

Archie swallows. His throat moves— _her throat_ , the throat she kissed and bit and worshipped.

The throat that sang a song to another girl.

Veronica thinks she might shake out of her skin.

“ _No_ ,” she tilts her head up and turns around, walks away from him one more time.

She leaves him standing in the hallway again, saunters all the way down to the girl’s restroom, her resolve on the verge of shattering. _I can’t forgive her_ , Jughead had said, and Veronica didn’t question him, didn’t ask why, but she gets it. How incredibly powerless Archie made her. She can’t forgive him, she can’t hate him, she can’t love him and, as much as she wants to, she can’t ignore him.

Veronica stands with her hands at the sink, trying to breathe into her lungs, uncontrollable gasps for air turning into sobs. There are no pearls around her neck for her to pull. Betty isn’t there to catch her when she falls. No one is.

She hides her face in her hands and cries, like a dam breaking, back on a bathroom’s floor like no time has passed between prom and just now.

.

.

.

Graduation is a strange, hazy affair.

Toni is the chosen valedictorian and makes a speech about friendship and family, something cliché enough to get the parents emotional.

In the front row, Veronica can see Archie’s red hair and Betty’s blonde waves, Cheryl between them, according to their last names. Veronica is a couple of rows behind, sitting between Kevin and Reggie. The sky is a clear shade of blue and Reggie keeps looking at her like he used to look at her while Archie was on the run last year, kind of just _expecting_ her to fall apart at any moment. She doesn’t like that he has this information, doesn’t like all the ways he _knows_ she can hurt.

When she got back together with Archie, before summer started, almost a year ago, she knew that whatever they—Reggie and Veronica—had been once, whatever mess they had made, was something left behind for good. She was Archie’s girlfriend again, Reggie was Archie’s friend again, and their existence in the same sentence was linked to Archie one more time. They had been polite and friendly to each other, and Veronica thinks she hasn’t exchanged thirty words with Reggie this year.

Throughout the last week, she’d seen Reggie and Archie at school, talking in the hallways, Reggie trying to make Archie laugh. She didn’t look at them long enough to know if he ever succeeded. She felt a pang of jealousy, a sense of entitlement, because Reggie would’ve been only hers if she had wanted him to be. He'd said so.

_I want to be with you no matter what._

Mr. Honey’s substitute, whose name Veronica hasn’t bothered to learn, steps in once Toni’s speech is over. She starts calling for the class of 2020 and Archie’s name is the first to be beckoned. Veronica looks down so she doesn’t have to look at him, and she supposes she could’ve turned to Kevin for support if she wanted to, but Reggie’s hand silently finds hers first, strong and soft, no guitar callous, no songs he played for someone else.

Their fingers entwine and Veronica closes her eyes, turns her head to Reggie’s shoulder, and breathes in his Polo Blue cologne until she forgets that nothing in this town has ever really belonged to her.

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One day before she has to leave for New York, she’s going through the last of books and designer bags, wondering what _sparks joy_ when a golden chain falls on her comforter and all the blood starts seeping out from her hastily stitched wound.

It’s Archie’s necklace, the one she couldn’t bring herself to look at after he left, the one she kept hidden from herself even when he came back because it was a promise she knew he wouldn’t keep, _A &V Forever._

Veronica hates her own weakness, but she can’t run away from it. Her heart slams heavily against her ribcage as she crumples the golden chain with her fingers, the cold metal of the locket on her palm. She won’t stay with this. She won’t—the memories of his kisses and words are enough, they already mock her every day for being so stupid, and she’s given the _BettyandArchie_ box to Kevin already, but she refuses to have a physical, heart-shaped reminder of the extent of Archie’s betrayal. She’s going to give this back to him.

Maybe he’ll decide to throw it away, maybe he will laugh in a couple of years, think _oh, what a lie_ , but she’s not going to stay with this.

There’s a nauseating panic in the back of her that makes her act on rare instinct and the air is humid outside, and it’s sort of raining, a hot, sticky drizzle, but Veronica walks all the way to Archie’s house, holding the locket so tightly that the metal stings her skin.

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Mary Andrews opens the door when she rings. She seems surprised to see her.

“Veronica.”

It would probably be wise to just give the locket to her and turn around and get the _fuck out of here_ , but then Mary is pulling her inside that house that smells like Fred and offering her a towel, and then _drying_ her with a towel while she says things like _oh, honey_ , as Veronica shakes, throat _so_ tight that she’s already on the verge of tears when she says, “I’m here to see Archie.”

Mary smooths Veronica’s damp hair down. “He’s upstairs, sweetheart.”

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.

He is, indeed, upstairs. In his room, his door wide open, slumped on his bed with his back against the blue wall, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans, his gaze lost somewhere.

Veronica almost loses whatever twisted courage that got her to his door, but something must give her away, because he looks up before she has the chance to change her mind, and, just like in the hallway, he says, “Ronnie.”

Archie drinks her in—the mess she probably is, her hair all frizzy, her makeup worn-out—and gets up, taking a step towards her that she takes back like a spooked animal. He stops. “Why—” _are you here_ , he doesn’t ask.

Her voice doesn’t sound normal when she speaks. It’s way too small. She feels way too small, even more now that he’s standing up. “I’m here to give this back to you.”

She opens her palm. The chain has made indentations on her skin and and the locket rests right in the middle of her right hand.

Archie breathes. His chest goes up and down twice, and his head falls. “Ronnie… No, please.” He starts shaking his head. “No, don’t—babe,” he takes another step towards her, and Veronica doesn’t move, she just tremors at the word instead. “Don’t, this—it’s yours. Ronnie, please,” Archie mumbles and sniffles, and Veronica stays at his door with that stupid locket in her hand and she’s so much weaker than she should be. She can’t stop him from getting closer.

He covers her hand with his, the locket between them, and his touch cuts her open. Veronica makes a lacerated sound and her eyes fill rapidly with tears. “I don’t want it anymore.”

Archie keeps shaking his head and comes closer, leans in, the side of his nose resting on the side of hers, foreheads together. Veronica feels the warmth of the tears he’s already crying, and she wants to punch him, slap him, but all she can do is take ragged breaths that turn into sobs as he whispers, so close to her, “Ronnie. No, please—we can—I can fix this. I love you, Ronnie, I love you.”

Veronica lets go of his hand and holds his face in hers. The locket stays with him or falls to the ground, she doesn’t know—she holds his face with the intention of pushing him away, but she just ends up pulling him closer, her crying irrepressible now as he whispers _I love you_ into her cheekbone like it means anything after he couldn’t even choose her. “You keep saying that. You keep—” Veronica claws her fingernails on his shoulders. “Stop, stop saying it,” she’s weeping now.

Archie doesn’t stop. “Ronnie, please. I’m so sorry.” He holds her, crushes her in his arms, and Veronica hates how she can’t push him away, how she wants him to hold on. “I love you so much,” he cries against her. “I was lost and confused, but I can fix this, Ronnie, I can—”

“Look what you did to me,” she says and Archie groans like he’s been punctured.

For a split second, she _enjoys_ how she’s able to inflict some sort of pain in him, but it doesn’t stick.

Veronica has always been better at hurting herself than hurting Archie.

She kisses him. She’ll never be able to explain why, and later in life, she’ll wonder if she regrets it, but it’s what she does, pressing her mouth hard against his. It takes Archie a moment, but he kisses her back, quite urgently, tasting like the salty water of their combined tears.

There’s nothing romantic about it, nothing beautiful. Veronica bites hard on his lip and he shoves his tongue into her mouth, ripping a moan from her insides. She tugs at his t-shirt but doesn’t take it off, walking him back until the back of his knees hit his bed, and Archie falls on it, pulling her to straddle his lap.

Archie kisses her deeply and puts his hands on her body and it’s deplorable that, after everything, after being lied to and betrayed and not-chosen by him, she still wants him. That she still craves him, that she feels revered with how quickly he gets hard underneath her, that she’ll swallow every huffy sound she can get out of him. It’s indefensible how much she needs him, even if he's the reason for all her pain. It’s so fucked up, but knowing how fucked up it is, isn’t enough to stop her from opening his jeans and grabbing him in her hand until he’s panting in her mouth.

They don’t take off any of their clothes—instead, she pushes her underwear to the side, sinks onto him while he holds her close, a spiral of lust and desolation. His door is still wide open but they’re beyond caring—besides, Mary isn’t Fred. Mary never really checks on him.

“I love you,” Archie repeats against her neck once he’s inside of her, and she rides him in the rhythm that he says these words.

She’s crying again, tasting her own tears in his kiss. He helps her move faster and Veronica feels her walls pulsing around him. She reaches between their bodies to touch herself and that’s when Archie curls his hand on her hair, pulls it a little, kisses her neck. “I love you so much, Ronnie, I love you, we can’t be over, please—”

Veronica comes with a shiver. Archie follows, trembling underneath her. She holds on to him, heartbeat roaring in her chest, one more time if never again.

“I love you,” he whispers with his mouth on her shoulder. It’s somewhat heartbreaking because, deep down, behind the bruises on his knuckles and all the ways he’s made of flesh and blood, there’s still a boy who believes that love means something, something that she probably couldn’t give him.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be looking for it with someone else.

Veronica gets up, sliding off him. She adjusts her underwear and rolls her skirt down as Archie buttons his jeans closed again. The locket is indeed on the floor, she sees now, and one of them probably stepped on it during their frenzy, because the two halves of the heart are split. _How ironic,_ she thinks, wiping at her tear-stained cheeks. _How fitting._

Archie is still sitting on the bed, rumpled, and shattered, and looking at her like he’s expecting something.

“Ronnie,” he reaches out for her wrist, but Veronica curls her arms around herself, shaking her head. Even after everything, she still can’t find it in her to say _goodbye_ to him, so she just leaves.

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.

A lot later, Veronica curls under her duvet, still cold despite the blistering air of summer. Her eyes are bone dry again. There’s a lot of silence, and her breathing starts sounding like Archie’s husky declarations.

There’s one knock on her door. It opens without her even answering—her father’s signature announcement. “Mija,” he says, already entering her room.

Veronica is too worn-out to move. She remains still when Hiram sits on the edge of her bed.

“Your mother says your train is at five, tomorrow. This gives us time to have lunch together and discuss who will take care of your assets while you’re in New York.”

“Okay,” she says, quite sure that tomorrow at lunch the ‘City Hall of Riverdale’ will make an offer that she can’t resist and her father will want to buy Pop’s and La Bonne Nuit and turn it into some profitable God knows, but she is no longer fighting that battle. She just wants Pop Tate to be happy and for Jughead to have a roof over his head until he leaves. She doesn’t care for anything else.

“Okay.” Hiram nods, solemn, agreeing. Veronica sinks into her pillow, expects him to get up, but he doesn’t. It takes him another minute to speak. She’s not quite ready for it. “Whatever happened that… _separated_ you and Archie, I’m sorry. And I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but it will go away.”

Veronica takes a deep breath. There’s a small part of her that wants to take in whatever advice that her father has for her, but the whole idea is just laughable— _mom cheated on you too, daddy, what did you do? oh, wait, you had a mistress, and another daughter, maybe you have a whole family apart from us, maybe that’s why mom tried to kill you._

She thinks about the broken golden heart on the floor, about the broken golden boy on the bed, and wonders if, like some cruel Midas, everything she’ll ever touch will turn into violence.

“I don’t want you to hurt him,” Veronica says, firmly, with her business voice, the one he taught her, even if she’s behaving essentially like a child. Hiram seems surprised by her request, forehead wrinkling as if the thought would have _never_ crossed his mind. “If you do that, I’ll have to protect him. Do you understand?”

Hiram gives her a gentle smile, the kind of smile he used to give her before Riverdale, proud and calm and steady. His nod is small, probably sincere—she still doesn’t know the difference, she probably never will. Stupid little girl.

He gets up then, stands by the threshold, holds on to the door frame not to lose balance. “You’re a better person than I’ll ever be, Mija. I’m proud of you.”

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.

Veronica leaves behind the small town, the fever dream she wandered into three years ago, the all-American boy that shattered her heart into a million pieces, all of them bundled together in her chest, ready to be glued back together and reshaped by her own deft hands.

In the end, she thinks she’ll be grateful, she thinks she’ll cherish it, for she didn’t even know she had a heart before she’d met him.

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(in three years, veronica will stop thinking about archie every day.

in five, he’ll only be lingering in the very back of her mind, just something that happened to her once.

in eight, she’ll see him again.)

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End file.
